


Deadra's Bane and Dragon Born

by BaratheonBabe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:30:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaratheonBabe/pseuds/BaratheonBabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nord named Arya wakes up in an imperial cell with no memory of who she is or how she got there. After the hearts day massacre of the Emperor Uriel Septim and all his known heirs, Arya is charged with seeking out his Illegitimate son Gendry in the ruins of Kvatch. Together, they must close shut the jaws of Oblivion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Heart's Day Massacre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya wakes up in an Imperial prison cell with no memory of how she came to be there. In fact she can't remember much of anything at all. In the evening hours of the Hearts Day festival, Kvatch is over run by Deadra from Oblivion.

The 16th of Suns Dawn

The figure of and old man, with a ruby the size of and infants fist on a gold chain round his neck, spoke of doom without words. His Wrinkled face and the mouth inside his white beard solemn, yet his blue eye's shined. The man grew younger, and his beard blackened as it receded until it was almost nothing. His face grew more angular, less soft, more tan, more brooding than solemn now. It was a whole new man, not the same person at all, but the eyes remained. The boy looked dead at her, and placed a bronze helm he was holding onto his head. It had horns and a snout like that of a bull. The boy opened his mouth a great roar escaped it as his body grew, and his arms turned to golden wings, and his whole body into that a brightly shining golden Dragon. She shielded her eyes against it. 

Arya opened her eyes to find thin beam of dusty light came through the high window of her cell and onto her face, replacing the blinding light of the dragon. She could smell the sea outside, and the breeze that came in was warm. Was she in the Empire? She rose blearily from the hay pile on the cold stone floor, her sack cloth tunic scratching uncomfortably against her bare skin, the chains that held her hands jingling, her dirty greasy hair hanging in her eyes. 

She lifted herself up and came to the bars of the cell looking around the prison. 

“Well aren't you a fair lass?”

She found the dark elf sneering in the cell across from her. She narrowed her eyes, indignant.

“Shut up.”

“Your skin is so pale, so pure! And you body is so-”

Arya plucked up a stone off of the ground and pitched it across the way, narrowly missing his head. The Elf laughed. 

“Let me guess, you’re a nord! I bet you think your pretty tough don’t you? I bet you know how to swing a sword and everything. Well it dosn’t matter! Not down here, but don’t worry. They’re always nice to the pretty ones, right up until the end.”

She heard a female voice down a ways “Bauras, lock that door behind us.”

“Oh look at that!” the elf said gleefully “The guards are coming! For you!”

Arya leaned to the bars of her cell trying to get a better look, paying little mind to the dunmer. The woman she had heard was indeed walking towards her, in a full suit of specially made armor. Shining silver decorated with gold. The hair under her helm was dark, and everything about her voice, posture and expression spoke of duty. 

“This cell is off limits.” the woman soldier said once standing before her, to her identically armored companions “What’s this prisoner doing inside?”

The one called Bauras shrugged taking a key king from his belt “Usual mix up at the watch.”

“Never mind her then. We need to get the emperor to safety.” 

Arya was instructed to back up against the wall on the far side of the cell, a a band of armored blades came in escorting the emperor Uriel Septim. He was old, but not past seventy. He had shoulder length clean white hair and a short white beard. His eyes were a fierce blue, and his dress was regal as you would expect. He looked tired as well, very tired.

The most striking thing about him was the large ruby amulet that hung from his neck on a gold chain. 

“My true born sons...they are dead,” he said mournfully. 

“We don’t know that sire,” the captain responded as she pressed down two bricks. The was made a shuttering noise before it started to come apart, sending out dust and the noise of grinding stones.

“No-” he started, but then he caught sight of Arya. She put her head down.

“Let me see your face,” he commanded. 

Arya looked up grudgingly, her short greasy hair hanging in her eyes again. The old man clutched her arm and pushed the dirty hair aside with trembling royal hands that smelled of rose water.

“Yes, You are the one from the dreams…you may just save us all.”

The one called Bauras crossed his arms, giving her a friendly yet skeptical look “Who are you?”

“No one.”

“Well It looks like it’s No One’s lucky day. Keep close, and don’t try anything funny or I’ll run you through. Understand?”

She nodded and followed the emperor and his men into the passage. 

“So where dose this go?” Arya asked the captain. 

She looked Arya over before smiling “It takes us from the prison to the sewers, and from there we can go anywhere in the city. You’re built like an acrobat, are you one?”

Arya furrowed her eyebrows “I erm…”

“Yes my girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”

“Do you remember why you were in prison?”

She shook her head “No, nothing…”

“Well that’s a damn shame…well you seem able, and the emperor is... fond of you. How would you like to join the blades? Is that something that would interest you.”

Arya blinked “I’m not sure what that is.”

“Well, a few of us serve as the emperor’s personal guard. Baurus there,” she pointed to the Redgaurd man “he’s the youngest blade to ever serve in the Emperor’s personal guard. We also carry out various tasks for the empire and collect information. It’s a very old order, founded in the first era in fact.”

“I think I’d be very interested in something like that actually.”

“Glad to hear it. I know a good recruit when I see one. Are these battle scars dear girl? They seem it, like they were formed in a struggle."

"I suppose they must be," she said examining scars up her outer arms. Her own skin was a stranger to her. The Marks made her uncomfortable, they felt unnatural.

Perhaps you can come with us to Clou...!” there was the sound of metal scraping metal. Arya turned to see a blade that came through the front of the captains chain mail, red with her own blood. The assasin stood behind her, in red armored robes and a sliver mask that glinted in the torch light. They held up the captian like a silent doll.

Arya quickly maneuvered around the killer and slipped her chains around the assailants neck and pulled hard. He dropped the slain captain and brought his hands to his throat, choking. Bauras charged over and thrust his sword through the mans skull. Arya jerked her head back in time not to be skewered as well, and his blood fell onto her face with a pained gargle. 

“Captain Renault?” the old Emperor wheezed.

“I’m sorry sire…but we had to keep moving,” Bauras turned to her with his keys “That was pretty crafty prisoner. I don’t want you trying that on me.”

He unchained her and locked the gate behind his party as they moved to the next chamber with Arya on the other side. He dropped the chains out of her reach “You wait there. Don’t try and follow us.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Arya walked back and picked up the torch the lady captain had dropped before having a seat next to her body.

“My name is Arya…” she said aloud o the fallen “I am…a nord. I am from…” She couldn't say at the moment. Was she from Skyrim?

She knew the Emperor when she saw him. Did that mean she had seen him before?

As she was trying to piece her memory together she heard rustling in the corner. She held the torch out to the darkness “Hello?”

At her call three giant rats the size of small dogs began leaping in her direction. She jumped up, drawing the sword from the Captains body. She slashed through the great rats and discovered the hole in the wall where they had come from. It was just big enough for her to squeeze through. She followed through the long passage, hoping it would lead out to the sea she had smelled in her cell.

“I know who the Emperor is because…”

It was because of something she had seen in a dream. He was a man from a dream too, but she didn't remember the whole of it. It was only faintly familiar.

She leaned to a wall, and slid briefly as it was coated in green scum “I’m Arya…” she lifted the sword in her hand having a look at the blood spattered thing in the torch light “and I had teacher from…Valenwood?…or was it Morrowind?”

She brought the sword slashing through the air and came into a stance that felt correct, familiar. These memories weren't faint recognition or days she could play through in her mind. They were tied up in her arms and her legs, her hands and her feet. You couldn't forget things that had become a part of your body.

She continued on her path until she came round to a drop where she saw a goblin witch roasting one of those giant rats over a fire. The beast wore a cloth over her ass and the skull of a goat over her head.

Arya jumped down with a flip and rolled to her feet, slashing the goblins throat before they had the chance to react “…Yeah...I am an acrobat.”

“It’s that damn prisoner again!”

Arya whipped around to see Bauras and his party. He came after her, and she fell back into a defensive position. All that path had done was bring her back to the guards! Damn it all!

"I told you not to follow damn it! Are you trying to get yourself killed? We thought you were another assassin." 

“She must be working with them,” said a different guard. 

“Stop,” she was surprised to hear the old man command “I trust this girl.”

Baurus sheathed his sword with a sigh of frustration at the mix up, and the group moved on.

The Old Man fell into step beside her “Do you know The Nine child?”

She nodded "Talos that's Tiber Septim, Mara the mother,... Arkay of life and death, Dibella of beauty.... Stendar, Kynareth, Julianos...Zenithar?" She counted on her fingers.

"Are not forgetting Akatosh my friend?"

"Akatosh the one, the great golden dragon...He was the one who brought Talos into divinity." 

"Divinity that is now being questioned across Tamriel. A political decision...who are we to deny the judgment of the one? Especially myself," he held the amulet at his neck "I am a soft man, and a poor ruler my girl. I bring the northerners into a war in order to end one with the Elves, and all while turning my back on Tiber Septim, Akatosh's chosen, my own ancestor. I fear I have doomed this realm with my foolishness. This false man rises against the high King under the mask of truth...but it is too late for me to change this. I have served the nine for so many years, and charted their path for me in the stars all of my days. I have wonder which stars you were born beneath?”

“The Shadow…” Arya remembered. She was born under the shadow.

“My child, I go to now to my grave, but your stars are not mine. You will follow me yet for a time and then we must part.”

“…Do you know who I am? Or why I was in the prison?”

He shook his head “Perhaps the gods have placed you here. As for what you have done, it matters not. That is not what you will be remembered for.”

She huffed, frustrated. She wasn’t asking for a riddle, she was asking who she was.

“Damn it!” the prickly guard exclaimed “This gate is bared from the other side! It’s a trap!”

“What about that side passage?” Baurus offered.

“Worth a try.”

They headed that way only to find a stone chamber with no doors. A dead end with no way out. 

"Do you hear that," Bauras said. They heard more men rushing in from behind them, and all of the blades went to meet them with crying out “For the emperor!”

She was about to rush and join them in the fight when Uriel Septim caught her shoulder “This is the end of my path child.”

He took the ruby amulet off from around his neck and pushed it into your hand “Take this. Guard it with your life. Go see Jauffre at Weynon Priory. The fate of the world rests in your hands. Find my heir, my final heir. Only Jauffre the knight commander knows of his existence. Find him and together close shut the jaws of Oblivion.”

The wall behind the Emperor came open and another masked assassin was behind it. Arya moved to stop him but it was too late, the older man was struck down. 

The assassin looked to the amulet in her fist. 

“You picked a bad day to take interest in the Septims stranger.” He rose a dagger above his head and slashed. Arya dodged and returned with a jabb of the captains sword. 

His sword clashed with hers time and again, and in a simple misstep she was disarmed. 

Baurus charged in and pinned the assassin to the wall with his sword.

He left him there on the wall and ran a hand down his face and the blood ran down the assassin's feet. He tore the silver mask off his body and threw it to the ground “We’ve failed…” he looked to her and Arya raised her sword to him. 

“Put that down boy.” he said calmly.

“I’m a girl!”

“Put it down…Why do you have the amulet of kings?”

She looked at the ruby, this looked bad “The Amulet of kings…The Emperor gave it to me I swear... He said I had to find someone called Jauffre at a monastery.”

“Weynon Priory?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“He said there’s another heir, one only the knight commander knows about. What's a knight doing in a priory house?”

The young man looked at her thoughtfully “He saw something in you…the dragon born see things other men don’t. If Uriel Septim trusted you with this task, then I won’t question his ghost so much as I did the man, poor soul…” he extended his hand “and thank you for bringing me the Captains sword back. It will be given a place of honor.”

Arya let out a breath and handed him the sword, half sure he was going to run her through with it. He didn't, and instead pointed the way with the blade “That way will take us out through the sewers. there are rats and goblins, but the way you handled yourself back there I’d say they should be no problem for you. Am I right?”

She nodded “I can handle myself.”

Just then the body on the wall gasped, and opened his empty white eyes, which he turned to Arya. His face was stark white with blue veins, and his mouth held a joyless smile "Lord Dagon has shown me his plans for you... I hope to see you in paradise my sweet, sweet sister. There I may kill you again and again and again and agia-" 

Baurus took the extra dagger from its sheath and cut the talking corpses throat. It held it's head up, starring at her and noiselessly moving it's lips still for a few moments before it died again. 

"By the nine divines..."

They found there way out of the sewers, occasionally slashing through mud crabs or rats, and out to the sea, but the walked away from it and around the city walls to the stable.

The rode double on his horse to the priory. Arya held onto the amulet tightly looking back at the city. Perhaps someone there knew who she was, but she feared it would be the city guard who recognized her. She had now only the task the emperor had given her, and the dream she could hardly remember. 

A dream about Uriel Septim, his boy, and the great golden dragon. 

***

Gendry sat with his friends against the wall of the Temple of Akatosh with his friends, watching the celebration. Vendors sold wreathes of fresh flowers, minstrels played and people danced in the street. There was a slight chill left hanging in the spring air, but all in all it was a beautiful hearts day. 

Count Goldwine ran to the center of the square carrying a paper drum painted with roses and lilies. He threw the drum into the air, and some of the mages from the local guild caste fire balls and knock back jinxes on it. The paper drum exploded and rained over the festivities with gold septims and fresh flowers. Everyone cheered and Gendry even caught a gold septim in his hand. 

Some beggars rushed into the square to pick up some of the gold, and most everyone laughed at them. Even count Goldwine.

Gendry shook his head and handed his Septim to and old woman as he started back across the cobbled road.

“Where ya goin?” called Hot Pie after him. 

“I’m going to get back to work.”

“But it’s a holiday,” Lommy retorted “you should come to the Arena with us. We‘ll get rich, It‘ll be fun.”

He shook his head “Nah I don’t like the Arena, it smells funny.” That wasn't the truth of it though. Gendry disliked seeing men fight and die for money.

‘I used to have to beg,’ Gendry thought putting hammer to steel, and steel to quenching trough ‘when the priests turned me out and I didn't have a master. Having nothing and no one isn’t a joke. Men fighting for pocket money isn't a show.’

He kept thinking about Goldwine, laughing. He didn’t know. He couldn’t possibly know what it was like, and how could he? Raised the the counts mansion, given almost anything he desired, besides what he could have had as the son of a Septim. Everything and more, to much to be smart or strong.

He picked up his bulls head helm. You needed to be a bull if you weren’t born the son of a count or a lord or an Emperor. You needed to be strong and stubborn and tall.  
He worked well into the night time festivities, stopping now and again for water or to piss, until he heard screams that didn't come from glowing steel. He kept his hammer in his hand and threw his helm on top of his head before making his way outside. 

Lanterns that had been glowing on strings fell and burned in the street. Men, women and children were slaughtered where they stood by yellow long eared gremlins and purple and red skinned deadroth wielding maces and long swords and staffs, gargling and growling. A gigantic deadric siege crawler with fire in it's great eyes and the legs of spider smashed through the city walls sending stone and fire raining down as gold and flowers had done before. Towers of the count's castle fell, people screamed, and the city glowed in red flames. 

Gendry thought about barricading himself inside the forge, but caught sight of a woman crawling up the steps of the chapel of Akatosh with one of the yellow gremlins biting at her heels…but it stopped... and would not follow up the steps.

He fought his way back across the road, pushing his way through the fray with strength and his hammer. Once up the chapel steps he slammed his hammer against the stone repeatedly and screaming, screaming for anyone who was alive out there to come to the chapel. Come to the temple! Come to the chapel! They cannot follow onto hallowed ground!

As He was hammering he watched people turn and run to him. One was Hot-Pie, who's head was promptly bashed in by a deadric mace. 

His mouth fell open, and he stood shocked for a moment before a black flaming arrow came flying towards him. Gendry dodged it and helped pull a small girl up the steps before shoving her inside. City guardsman followed his lead, pulling survivors into the temple. 

After a the long and almost fruitless effort to save more citizens he made it into the temple himself. An older woman made her way around the temple tending to the wounded. City guard conversed about their coarse of action. He moved through the church with a serious expression, and then falling to his knees before the altar of Akatosh, seeing the lightning and the fire glowing behind the stained glass dragon. On his altar sat mirth, wheat, fresh fruit and fish. Offerings of the faithful.

"You turn your back on me," he said like a lost child "and now you turn your back on us all." HE glanced to the shrine of Talos wondering if the gods had unleashed hell on them for abandoning gods chosen, or for worshiping a common man. A man no different then he once again to sleep on the cold stone floor of this church, or Count Goldwine safe in his keep under silk sheets. Tiber Septim and his heirs. Were they of divine blood, or were they pretenders? The soft persuadable man who now occupied the throne made Gendry wonder. 


	2. The Chapel Of Akatosh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a meeting with the night commander and a good nights rest, Arya ventures to find Gendry. Once she reaches the city however, she feels it may be too late.

The knight commander of the blades was apprehensive to say the least, even with the young Bauras confirming every word she said. He sat at a desk across from them wearing a pair of round rimmed glasses and tapping some sort of golden mapping instrument. He had one hand up for his head to rest on while he listened to Arya's fairy tale of assasination and prophecy. He only seemed to perk up a bit when she came to the part about the heir, his eyebrows raised. "How could she know that," he must have wondered "The child's being born was between I, the Emperor, and a dead woman." And so his world crashed down around his ears. 

"Well," he said rubbing his eyes "If Uriel Septim is in fact dead, along with all his known heirs then we have a mighty task before us. I left the boy when he was young, I checked in from time to time but only when I had other business in town, and I haven't seen him in...over ten years now. He'd be quite a different man indeed."

He stood up and turned his back to them, looking out at the sunny priory garden "If we look for the boy, It won't be easy to find him. If we go we will bring whoever these...worshipers of Dagon are with us. The way you describe it, they are very adept at uncovering information and it is unclear how much inside knowledge of the blades they have. Obviously they know our passages under the city well enough to trap us in our own maze. If we ask about a young man with the physical descriptors I can remember of the child then all the happier these Dagon worshipers. It will be a race to find him, he may already be dead."

"There was something I didn't mention Knight Commander," Arya ventured respectfully, still hoping to gain a place in the order "I had a dream before the emperor came. There was a boy in my dream, as well as Uriel Septim... They had the same eyes sir, is a fierce blue the correct eye coloring?"

"Yes...go on." his eyes were still not trusting

"His face was very different though, not oblong or rounded. Not soft or full. He looked more Square and strong." the knight commanders face changed quite a bit, she continued "He seemed angry...or maybe just stubborn."

The old man crossed the room and grabbed her shoulders "Are you with them? The Mythic Dawn?"

"The who?" she squirmed.

"Let me tell you something about that amulet in your fist!" He snatched the necklace from her hand and held up the big Ruby "This is the amulet of kings. When I knew Emperor is crowned, they use this little bauble to light the fire in the pit at the temple of the one. It is the Power, no it is the protection Akatosh granted to the decedents of Tiber Septim. Are you following me so far girl? This is the PROOF of the divinity of a Dragon Born's blood. It can only be worn and used by the dragon born, and lighting the dragon fire in the Temple of Akatosh in the center of the empire is the only way to protect this world from Oblivion. The only way to keep your lord Dagon from ripping the whole world to ribbons. Who are you!? Are you working with the elves? Is this why they force us to turn our backs on Talos?"

Arya grew indignant "MY lord Dagon? Do I look like an Imperial to you? I am a daughter of Skyrim, where ever I am, I am a daughter of Skyrim and I would never turn my back on Talos, even as you Imperials command it." She spat then on the floor in between them, no longer caring if she could find a place in this man's order. "and don't you tell me about being forced to turn your backs on Talos. The force of the Empire is well enough to bring any outside force to it's knees, let alone combined with Skyrim. Skyrim full of able bodied men and women who would gladly fight in the name of Talos. Yet you sit here in your warm little corner of the world and tear Skyrim in two while you claim that treaty was for peace. Skyrim imperial loyalists against Skyrim rebels against the Empire? Not to mention the racial tension between the nords and the native born elves in the north, they themselves sons and daughters of the winter subjected to violence at the end of the rebel nords? Your peace treaty brings no peace. Uriel Septim gentle as he was, he was a soft man as well as a fool. Cut me down where I stand or let me go, but I won't be subjected to you're Imperial nonsense any longer." She started out of the room.

The Knight commander grabbed her again, this time by the arm.

"Don't think I won't strike and old man!" she snapped.

"You are truer to the Septim's than they are to themselves...you are right. Uriel, may the Nine keep him well in their love, was a weak man...With poor judgement...he was my very best friend in the world, have you ever had someone who meant more to you than anything in the world?"

"I don't remember," she replied coldly.

He looked tired and sad all of the sudden "I don't know if weather wish it on you or hope you never will...the boy is in Kvatch, you know his face. It's nearly nightfall. Stay at the priory house, wash yourself up, fill your belly, I'll give you some gear and you will go and bring the prince to us." he turned his head to Baurus "And you go north, make ready for him at cloud ruler temple, see about gathering more intelligence on the mythic dawn cult and what they want."

Arya was given her very own room, and a bath was even drawn for her. It was cold water, but she heated it herself with fire magic. Even before taking her rough spun sack cloth tunic she had made notice of battle scars that the captain had mentioned...but their were others, strange ones. There were some on her back which felt very strange indeed. She had been burned, on her legs she could almost make out words written with a blade. Worst of all was one that ran from her sternum and down her belly. She imagined someone pulling her open like a purse. The thought made her uncomfortable, and strangely frightened.

After that she dressed, and ate with the monks and Baurus (staying closer to Baurus than any of the Knight Commander's like.) Then clean, belly full and dressed in a comfortable night shirt she snuggled down in her bed, near the roaring fire and fell asleep.

The next morning Arya stepped down the stone steps of the priory house, the smell of overgrown honeysuckle blending with that of horse dung. A kind enough prior called maborel had lent her use of his icelandic traveling pony. The man had a permanently serious expression and spent much of his time in the chapel and the kitchens.

She liked him much better than the knight commander, who was suspicious and disapproving of her. It also seemed as if he believed it was out of his hands. These were the words of his Emperor and the will of the divines.

Fed and bathed, supplied and rested, armored and armed, Arya was ready to get under way. The ride took two days, on the road. She had thought about cutting through the forest, but a passing imperial legionnaire advised against it. She was confident she could hold her own against a few, but a whole encampment of bandits might be too much to handle on her own.

She enjoyed most of the ride, as her pony ambled through the beautiful countryside. The weather had been forgiving for most of the ride, but as she approached the city of Kvatch the sky began to darken. Only heat lightening and a bit of thunder she figured, eager to sleep in a real bed for the night.

But as she came closer and the smell of burning and sulfur grew, she became less sure that this was the start of a summer thunder storm. Then as the city came into view, the walls smoked into the sky, and below them down the winding path she spied an encampment of survivors and hurried her pony along..

She dismounted her horse and led the speckled beast around the cooking spits and canvas tents. On one bed roll was an argonian man, burned up half his chest. A dunmer woman in a tattered blue gown was tending to his wounds with healing magic. A family of imperials shuddered and sobbed around a small form covered in a death shroud.

‘If the boy is dead, If I can’t find him’ she thought to herself ‘we all are.’

“I didn’t salvage much on the way out,” she heard an Orc woman telling another refugee “but I’m hoping it’ll be enough to make a new life for myself in the Imperial City.”

“No, no, no,” the man returned “Kvatch has burned before, we’ll build her up again. Twice as grand. Hang tight good woman.”

“The nine do stitch the imperials up in these parts with a thicker skin don’t they? Thicker than the ones in the capital anyway. Did you see that bull of a boy? On the temple steps swinging that hammer of his? Helping more people to safety?”

Arya started to tie up her horse quickly before making her way over. A bull of a boy. She’d seen a bull in her dream.

“I did indeed, I can’t decide if the lad is clever or a fool. Deadra can’t get into that temple now, but neither can anyone else.”

Arya jogged over the mud and halted in front of the pair “You said something about a bull boy?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for a boy called Gendry. Young man, dark hair, fair eyes, strong for his age. Is he the bull you’re talking about.”

“Yeah that’s him, the armorers apprentice. Why?” the Redguard man with the sad smile teased “You his girl?”

“No!” Arya blurted indignant.

“What do you need the lad for then?”

She dug the toe of her boot in the mud “He’s...there’s been a few deaths in his family. I'm just a simple courier, come to tell him and give him some letters.”

“I didn’t know the lad had any family, rotten they must be!” the Orc woman exclaimed “poor fella.. He’s been out on his own since...as long as I’ve know him. He led a group of people into the chapel, did a real good job with those monsters. Brave he was, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. I....I think he should still be in the city.”

“Thank you,” Arya said shortly. She left her horse in the camp and made her way up the winding road on foot. Fetching the prince would not be as easy as she had anticipated. She should have know.

On the way up the dark stony hill a priest carrying a lantern screamed at her to stop. He screamed of doom and the disfavor of the divines. Kvatch was cursed he said, a city abandon by the gods. Oblivion would open, and the whole world would burn.

At the end of the winding road the city guard held a barricade, attempting to hold back monsters who poured from Oblivion itself. The portal stood seventy feet high at least, and glowed like flame.

The captain of the gaurd approached. He was an older man, with graying hair and soft eyes “Get back to the encampment!” he commanded her “This isn’t a place for little girls!”

“I’m not a little girl!” she yelled back “I’m-” she couldn't remember her exact age “I’m one and twenty!”

“If you are a day over eighteen I've just turned thirty again. Get back down to the encampment girl!”

“I’m not a girl! I’m a woman grown and I can fight!”

“You’re a civilian-”

“-Gods be true!”

Arya unsheathed her short sword and started over the barricade. The captain called for some of the others to hold her back, but she wriggled away and ran. As she charged across she sliced through a couple of small yellow trolls with long claws and pointed ears on her way around the portal and through the destroyed gate. The guard was called back, as she sprinted foolishly into the square.

A Deadroth with blue skin and high menacing eyebrows, had been cleaning his claws with a curved dagger of onyx. He was a terrible thing to behold, with his dark armor and his horns. He seemed to be guarding the chapel.

Upon spying her he flipped the dagger in his hand, and approached with calm determination. Arya held fast to her sword and soon it clashed with his blade. In a misstep she allowed him to graze her cheek, which began to bleed down her neck. In another more deft move she slipped beneath his arm, slashing his underarm along the way. He was not as affected as a mortal man might have been, and wasted no time worrying over his half detatched arm.

Arya ran, past other daedra and around burning wreckage up the temple steps.

None of the monsters pursued her beyond that point, but stood at the bottom of the stone steps snapping and growling angrily like a lion outside a cage full of raw beef.

She tried to open the doors, but they had been barred from the inside. She banged on them.

She glanced back to see the blue deadroth aiming a bow. She wondered horrified, how he even managed to break it at all with the deep jagged slice she’d landed.

She fell to the ground in order to dodge the shot, and the chapel doors opened for her. She crawled in and kicked the door back shut behind her with the heel of her boot.

“That was stupid Gendry!” a boy shouted “That could have been a monster!”

 

Arya whipped her head around to see the bull laying across the ground near where she lay - an arrow in his shoulder. The last Septim had taken the shot intended for her. He growled both in pain and frustration “Those things can’t get in the temple stupid! But the arrows can that’s for damn sure!”

Arya scrambled to her knees to the boys side “By the nine, are you alright?”

“Been better,” the boy said, his voice heavy with the hurt in his shoulder.

A crone in brown robes hobbled over with the help of another young woman. The old woman reached for Arya’s face. She began to object but the blue light and the coldness of it enveloped her wound and when the woman drew her hand back it was gone. The woman had healing magic.

“Thank you,” Arya murmured before turning back to the young man on the temple floor. He had his fathers eyes, that was for sure. Blue and piercing, breathtaking really. He was strong, she could tell. His trousers were cheap, his hands calloused from work, his bare arms and chest scarred from many a brawl. This was a tradesman, an urchin, a worker. whatever he was, he was a man of his own making through and through. This boy hadn’t felt any of the privilege his royal blood should have brought him...and that kind of injustice felt familiar. Not personal but familiar. It felt sad, but warm for some reason.

“Do you know magic?” she asked him suddenly, not quite knowing why.

“No," he replied confused "Just an armorers apprentice.”

“Oh...well I’m sorry I got you shot,” she said as the younger woman helped the healer to the floor near Gendry.

“It’s alright," he sounded strangely contented now "I’ve had worse. When I was a kid I fell of the roof of the...fell from the...” his voice faded, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Oh no...”

The old woman shook her head “Oh dear,” before pulling the black feathered arrow from  
his shoulder “yes this is a cursed bow, I can feel the demons magic. Myra,” she handed the arrow up to the younger woman “Snap this in two and throw it on the fire.That will break some of the demons magic.”

“Will erm...will he be alright?” she asked the lady.

“It will take time, and he will get very sick, but the bull will pull through. He has a dragon's heart this one.”

***

The next few days were a blur of fever and candle light. He would lay the whole day on his bed roll underneath the altar of akatosh, with hardly the energy to stand. Everyone was fighting, stealing one another's rations, some were even running off and being cut down in the square.

The girl kept to herself most of the time, she would chat with this person and that but never for long. She had brought a little more food with her, which was something the group of them desperately needed.

He wagered she felt guilty about his getting shot as well, because while Myra and her Gran took care of him most of the time, Arya had a turn at it sometimes as well. She didn't say much to him if she could help it, and she was so small. He didn’t understand how she had made it through alive. Where was she from? Why did she come here?

Was the count or the emperor or the captain going to get them out of here, or were they going to leave the fate of the survivors to the girl who had gotten him shot and didn't speak? It was no use hoping for the mercy of the nine. The gods offered them a safe place to die, nothing more.

One day, when he was finally able to see around the chapel clearly and sit up on his own, he made it his business to find out who this girl was.

“Gran Gill said to bring you this,” Arya said holding two wooden bowls.

With a bit of effort he pulled himself up and leaned to the shrine, accepting the bowl “Thanks.”

She started off.

“Wait a minute there. Could I have a chat with you?”

She hesitated a moment before nodding and having a seat across from him on the stone floor.

“You fought your way in here, that’s more than most. Most of us were cut down before we got to safety.”

She shrugged, digging into the barley stew.

“Why did you come here?”

“I’d rather not say..”

“Come on!” he replied “I saved your skin and took an arrow for you. Couldn't you just tell me what for?”  
Arya Cringed a bit “Well...I want to be a blade. I came here on a mission for Talos.”

“The blades? The emperor's guards and all that? Knights and Commanders? Men in shiny new armor?” He rolled his eyes “Well I guess that explains it then. Your some knight, or almost knight. You’re probably some counts daughter, you’re used to bossing everyone around aren’t you?”

“What makes you think I’m a counts daughter?”

“Well Knights are always noblemen's sons, plus you talk like one. I should be calling you mi’lady. Pray tell, shouldn't it be your brothers playing hero mi’lady?”

She set down her bowl so hard some of the broth splashed onto the floor “I met a CAPTAIN of the blades who was a woman! A Captain! Maybe I’ll be a captain someday, maybe I’ll be Knight commander. She was a real warrior, better than you with your stupid smithing hammer.”

“Of course she’s better than me, I’m too low born to be as good as her.”

“Don’t you talk about her...and they recruit small folk too I’ll have you know. My friend Baurus grew up on the waterfront in the capital and he’s a blade.”

“Well goodie. Maybe one day I’ll be a big FANCY knight for some big FANCY emperor mi’lady.”

“Stop calling me that! and you couldn't be a blade.”

“Oh really now? What makes you so special? You aren't even strong, your tiny! Oh I forgot, you’re some high born.”

She picked up her barley stew standing up “I’m moving up wind from you. You smell like goat shit.”

“That’s Bull Shit to you!” he yelled after her and she retreated behind the shrine of talos “I’m too bloody low born to be dining with mi’lady high!”

“I’m not a lady!” she yelled back.

A few days later when his shoulder was all healed, and the grain stores were running very low, the group began discussing what was to be done. Would they arm themselves and make a run for it? Would they send scouts to sneak into the market and bring back food? Would they wait and see if the legion would come and rescue them?

“Those gates...” said Gran Gill “Some of them closed before, so we know it CAN be done.”

“What are you saying?” said one of the boys.

“I’m saying the easiest way to get all these people out, is if that gate to Oblivion was closed to the daedra. It is likely that a way can be found, to close the gate from the inside. I’ve read such things in my old books, about before mundas was protected from the worlds of Oblivion by magical barriers.”

Arya nodded “Centuries ago.”

“So we send someone inside to shut it?” Gendry asked.

Most of the group looked to the floor or scoffed. Some of the children whispered to each other and their mothers. One girl began crying and held onto her father's armor begging him not to go into the hell fire.

Gendry looked to the girl Arya, who stood straight faced with her arms crossed. 

She looked back to him, which he hadn't expected. She then grabbed him by the arm and led him behind a column.

“You and me need to make a run for it,” she said “You know that priest of Talos who used to check on you from time to time?”

“What about him? You know him?”

“Yes, he sent me to fetch you. You’re better now, and the food is running low. We can cut our way out, steal a couple horses and run to Weynon Priory.”

“...Why does he care? I’m just some bastard. Just a tradesman. Why would he care? I don’t even go to church regular.”

“I think Jeaffre should tell you when we get there...”

Gendry glanced round the corner “Do you really want to leave these people for dead?”

Arya glanced around, and had a long look at the crying little girl. One called weasel fondly by the survivors “No...but more will die if you don’t come with me.”

“What do you mean?”

She stomped a foot frustrated “I can’t tell you. He should tell you.”

“You are such a little princess, with your foot stomping. I’d really rather leave when we all leave together, and I’m sure not going out there with that gate open, some deadra's will rip me to ribbons." 

"It's just deadra, deadra for lots and for one if you like. Deadroth is one."

"So? No offence, but I’m not running away with mi’lady. Ask count Goldwine’s stable boy, he’s handsome.”

“I don’t need HANDSOME! I need the blood of the dragon or the whole world is going to burn! No offense my prince but I’d like not to burn with it!” She stormed over to the doors

“What do you mean prince?” he called after her.

“I’m going to shut the oblivion gate!” she shouted.

Some of the people cheered, Gran Gill included. Others were less certain.

Gendry was one of them. 

“Hey wait!” he yelled after the girl “I’ll help you! I’m coming too!”

The group began to cheer for him as well “BULL! BULL! BULL!”

Arya stood shocked next to the door as he ran over to his bed roll to pull on his sack cloth shirt, some damaged chainmail he’d pulled off a Deadroth, his bulls head helmet and also his smithing hammer.

“Have this Bull!” Weasels father came to him and handed him a heavy steel war hammer with a metal hilt and a spike to replace his small one meant for steel. It was Heavy, but not too much for him. A fine thing, Gendry smiled and thanked the older man.

Arya came over while some of the others were offering hunting bows and breastplates and gauntlets.

‘I led these people in here,’ he thought ‘and now I’ll get them out.’

“Hold up,” the girl said “This is a bad idea.”

“Going alone is a bad idea. You’re so tiny, skilled maybe but little. Besides it’s best if you have someone to wipe the deadra’s blood off your face mi’lady.”

“Stop calling me that!” she said accepting a short staff from Gran Gill “You’re staying here!”

He stood tall and broadened his shoulders in his mismatched armor “Make me.” Even at his silliest looking, he was stubborn.

A smile appeared on her grey eyed dirty face, like she was thinking “You know what? Fine, Just remember this; No sacrifice plays, if you go down - we all go down.”

“I’m planning on surviving thank you very much. I’m just coming because your ass can’t do it alone.”

"Whatever."

Everyone stood back as Gendry and Arya opened the doors and Started into the square. Gendry rushed right into the fray, smashing skulls and ripping open scamp throats with his hammers spike. He spied Arya back on the steps of the chapel using fire magic on the deadra and their like with gran gills small staff. 

Her hands and feet had been so absent of callus and wear, she corrected how he talked, and talked fancy herself. He had assumed that meant she was a lady, but a Nordic mage from the college would have smooth hands and an educated air, and she would have been cast out by the others of her kind. That also explained the scars. He resolved, while bashing a scamp between the ears and watching blood and brains spray, that he would continue to call her mi’lady anyway.

A blue deadra with an arm roughly sewn together with red yarn, knocked him prone and aimed a black bow at his face, it’s arrow had black feathers like the one from before. 

A charred daedric dagger came flying and sliced the bow string. The tension gave way to slack, the string slipped through the baffled dremora’s fingers and the bow dropped to the ground.

Ayra trotted over and enveloped the beast in flame with Gran Gill’s staff. He stumbled around gargling and growling before falling to the ground.

“There’s hell fire for you, you son of a daedric whore!” she shouted before offering him a hand up.

They finished off the rest of the monsters in the square, Gendry smashing his way in the front, Arya using her short sword to back stab with one hand and the staff to fry the lot of them with the other. 

She was a great partner, Gendry thought. She was small, but agile and quick. Good at fighting in a different way, in a more skillful way.

They left the square and stood before the fiery gate to oblivion.

“Into the hellfire?”Gendry inquired nervously.

He looked to Arya in her newly bloody light armor, she nodded “Into the hellfire.”


	3. Dark Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Skyrim, Sansa discovers that Arya has escaped imprisonment. In the Empire Gendry and Arya venture into Oblivion.

The sky was full of red clouds, the earth beneath their feet was an unforgiving clay, and the sea which stretched on forever on either side of the hell island was of molten lava. There was a door, grey with that familiar symbol painted in red.

Beyond the mound where the door sat, no doubt containing some sort of chamber, were three black towers that tore into the sky, and the greatest of the three cast a beam of fire forever into the sky. 

“Ganonah...” Gendry looked around “It’s real.”

“What?” Arya inquired. 

“I’ve been having nightmares about Ganonah since I was kid, that’s why the preists turned me out. They said I was troubled. Some of them called me a heathen.”

“They threw you out over some ash and lava and black towers?”

“No. They threw me out over corpses being turned upside down and left to rot in the open air, and I was going on about blood wells and the flesh of the punished and the like. They even tried to exorcise me once. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something in real life so awful as the things I see when I’m asleep.”

The grey door came open and out ran a Kvatch guard pursued but a scamp. Gendry and Arya had a race for it, but it was Arya’s quickness that won and she shoved her blade through the yellow beast’s eye and out the back of his skull.

“Thank the divines!” Said the soldier “I thought I’d never see a friendly face again. Hey there bull!” he came over and gave Gendry a big hug, lifting him off the ground armor and all.

“Oh gods, thank the nine! I’m getting out of here,” he said.

“What - can’t you-”

“Give us a little info?” Gendry interrupted. Arya had been going to ask if he could stay and help them. 

The man nodded and pointed “First place I would go is that tower there, that’s the direction they were taking Menien. If he’s still alive, he can tell you more than me.” He pointed now to the grey door "There are some of the scamps here and there in the cavern, but what you really need to watch for are the steam vents and the hollow ground. We lost three men in there. Keep to the left wall, and you’ll come through the other side. Divines guide you.”

The man turned and walked back out into the world of men.

“He should have stayed and helped,” Arya said. 

“I think he should have too, but the man does have a baby on the way, if they and the mother are still kicking.” before he started in the cavern.

Arya followed after him. The inside of the dark cavern was humid and hot like an oven “Keep to the left wall is what he said,” Arya said “Are you still there? I can hear something moving but I can’t see.”

“Yeah.” he reached back a hand and found Arya’s shoulder as they felt their way along the earthen wall. 

Arya could hear steam vents hissing, and scamps scuttling past without interest now and then. That or the creatures did not detect them in the dark

“Watch yourself here,” Gendry said “The ground feels a bit soft...”

Arya carefully felt her way along the earthen wall but, the ground beneath her feet began to buckle and crumble. She tried to make a leap off the hollow patch, but the force of her feet kicking only quickened the falling of the ashy clay and the light of the simmering lava lit up the cavern. 

Arya grabbed for the edge and Gendry took hold of her arm, his scruffy sweaty face now visible.

“It’s a good thing it was you and not me. You wouldn't have been able to lift me back up.”

“Yes I would!” Arya yelled back. 

He laughed at her “No you wouldn't tiny.

Then behind him came a winged creature with brown leather skin and the body of a muscular man. It shot a bolt of fire at Gendry’s shoulder and he nearly dropped Arya into the pit of boiling stone. Arya snatched it out of the air with her free arm, and bashed it’s little head into the clay several times. First the sound was a thump, then a crack, and after that squishing and the spurting of tainted blood.She then threw him into the lava, and he landed with a hiss.

Gendry pulled and Arya climbed. When she was back on solid ground Arya unsheathed her weapon and readied her spell hand “Better be ready,” Arya said “I think it was the light that attracted that one.”

“You got it,” gendry readied his war hammer and took the lead “On our guard, mind where we step.”

When they crept out of the darkness into the barren field of clay and ashes that was before the three towers what had before felt like an oven felt more the a summer breeze in comparison to the caverns. 

They made their way across to the blood well, the plane seeming to have been cleared by the first party of city guard. Deadra and men lie here and there. 

“The city has a lot of men at it’s...disposal,” Arya said. 

“Has to, biggest city on the continent. Still managed to keep it cleaner than Bruma they did. If you have it all in Kvatch, you really have it all.”

“What if you don’t have it all in Kvatch?”

“Then you still had Kvatch...if you had to sleep in an alleyway you wouldn't wake up with your throat slit or your shoes snatched. The walls used to make me feel so safe, nothing bad happened in Kvatch. All and all, good place to be homeless. Didn't always have a roof, always had the city...now that’s all done with I guess. Where’d you grow up?”

She shrugged “I can’t remember.”

***

Sansa wove dragon tongue and red mountain flower into a golden circlet. She was planning on sending it to Arya at the Dreadfort in a hatbox full of ice wraith teeth to keep it fresh on the journey, or maybe the court mage Old Nan could do something to make them fresh forever. 

Maybe she could ride up to the college where Jon was and see what they could do there.

Sansa was sure she would do anything to make Arya smile through the acute misery she no doubt endured every waking moment, and she prayed to the 9 - all of the 9, that at least her dreams were of home.

When they were captive in the Windhelm dungeon Ulfric gave Roose Bolton’s bastard the choice of one of two princesses in hopes of bringing the Bolton troops to his cause. 

When he came down Arya spit something willful at the man. Sansa begged he take her instead, but he chose Arya. No doubt to punish her,to break her spirit. Sansa did not think anything could break Arya’s spirit however. Ramsay Bolton could do his worst. 

But his worst was something awful. 

After that Sansa assumed Arya’s plan, to fashion a stone into a shive with which to pick the lock, then cut her hair short, put on a hood fashioned of an empty sack, and sneak out through the Grey Quarter. 

She’d almost slipped up, when a drunken brawler singing slurs at the dark elves stopped her to ask what a skinny thing like her was doing out so late. 

Then she braved the perilous journey back to the safe walls of of Solitude, and here she sat in the Blue Palace after long months, warm and safe, her hair grown back, drinking spiced wine with a pretty bard at the burning of king olaf festival when she could.

While her sister was forced into marriage with the most feared monster in all of skyrim. Worst of all the Bolton’s double crossed the rebels and came to the aid of the Empire’s unification with Skyrim. No doubt they planned to get rich off the empire, and more powerful being wed into the family of the high king.

‘They are fools. When this war is done we will win her back,’ she thought ‘Rob and Father will kill Ramsay Bolton and fetch my sister back to the Blue Palace.’

In the middle of her determined thoughts there came a pecking at her window

She pulled back her lace curtains to find a tiny red northern cardinal with a note tied round his foot.

She opened her window and the bird flew in with the cold air and onto her finger.

“Do you have a message for me little bird?”

She gasped as another bird blew in cawing and flapping his wings. He settles on her opposite hand.

“Hello to you too sir,” she said a little alarmed to the raven who’d lost his way.

She carefully picked up a letter opener and cut the brown twine holding the heavy letter round the crows foot. As soon as it was off the black wings darted out the window. She untied the green ribbon bow from the cardinals leg, but he flew up onto her wicker shelf. Sansa threw the letters down on her desk with the flower crown before shutting the window tight.

The first letter was from her bard caller, Lelidi who was her favorite distraction. She was romantic and adventurous, a former servant at castle Blue in fact. She was a good playmate to both Arya and herself. 

But after Theon starting attempting to woo her she fled to the college and had been living out real life adventures with a song on her lips.

She moved her own letter aside knowing that the other was probably official, and wars don’t wait for silly girls.

She moved on to the dark parchment addressed to her father...with the Bolton seal.

She stood from her desk and ran out to the throne room, the loose arms of her gown flapping around like birds wings. He wasn't there, but she did find him and Rob discussing tactics over the map and sigal pieces marking rebel houses and loyalists.

“I have a message from the Roose Bolton father!”

He and Rob both raised their eyes “What does it say?” he asked warily.

She extended the sealed letter “I didn’t read it.”

He tore back the wax with baited breath 

“Is it news about Arya?” Rob asked.

Eddard Stark scanned the paper “Arya...”

“So it is news about Arya...” Rob said.

Her fathers face rose with a smile, a little grey seeming gone from his beard “She’s lost to them. Missing.”

“Escaped more like. That bastard, I wouldn't wish him on Ulfric himself...Maybe I would”

Ned turned back to Sansa “Go tell your mother. Quick now, go on!”

She was surprised to find Rob and her father, who usually kept themselves buried in tactics and battles, following after her as she flew up to the nursery.

She spied bran who was in the middle of fiddling with some fire magic on the stairs (something that Arya or Jon taught him no doubt) when he looked up to see the princess the High King and The Young Wolf running up together. He followed.

In the nursery her sad mother was forcing a smile with Rickon on her knee.

“Arya’s run away, she’s run away from the Boltons, she’s gotten out!”

Queen Catelyn was shocked for a moment then burst into tears and laughter. Bran stole away little rickon and spun him around and threw him in the air. Her mother went to her father and Rob took both her hands and danced her round the nursery full of toys new, and play sword and dolly’s of old.

“Let’s not celebrate too soon...” Sansa said.

Everyone stopped “It’s just... she’s not home yet. She’s a hunted woman to say the least.”

“We should send men at once to find her,” Robb suggested

“No,” their mother said said “Robb, the only reason they would tell us is to draw us into their den. It certainly isn't our of courtesy.”

Her father continued “They'll call us traitors. They’re already finding great pull with the empire for the strictness of their ban of Talos worship.”

Rob nodded “Then we should send a small task force to find her trail. A few good men, quiet men.”

Catlyn noted the odd look that must have been on her face as concern, and took her hand in her own “ Do you want to come pray with me in the temple of the 8 Sansa?”

Sansa shook her head “I am going to send Prayers to Talos.

Rob frowned “You know there's not a shrine of Talos left in Solitude.”

“I still have my amulet.” Sansa returned leaving the room quickly.

***

Couldn't remember? “Not a thing about it?”

“No,” she said before they slammed in the doors of the blood well.

There was some sort of fire monster like a woman on fire just on the inside and Gendry blocked it’s fiery blows with his shield.

“Stay at my back!” he shouted “Lure the Scamp to your side!”

While Gendry blocked and hacked she taunted the yellow creature until it came upon her, and then she cut off it’s miserable head. While Gendry had the flaming woman stunned and recoiling Arya whipped around him and cut it’s throat. Boiling hot blood spilled over her gauntlet. Had she not been wearing it, her sword hand would have been in blisters for sure. 

“Help! Come get him!” a man's voice called from above.

“That must be him,” the girl said “Come on, get up on that spiky Dumbwaiter.”

“You mean the corpse crusher over here?” he said waving to the platform in the center of the room floating above a pond of blood and guts.

 

“I’ll swear on anything it goes all the way to the top before it smashes down.”

“Your life even?”

“Especially in fact, or may I be sliced in half. Quick as you like.”

They threw back the lever and the platform began to rise, dripping with the blood of the punished. They both hopped up, Gendry more apprehensively. He looked to her warily hearing the sounds of the interrogation above.

Arya gave him a sideways glance, her staff and her sword in hand “I’m not afraid.”

“Well then you’re stupid. This scares the hell out of me.”

They reached the top and Arya lept off in front of him. Gendry only kicked off when the platform had started to fall, and only caught the ledge with one foot. Arya had his shield arm and pulled him up. There were too many close calls in this place.

“HUUUMAAANS!” called a dremora in a crackling voice that came in two tones at once. He could see Arya was shaken by it.

“You shouldn't be here. Your flesh is forfeit! Your life is mine!”

Arya rushed forward with her sword, more in fear than in practicality, only to be knocked prone when the Daedra swung his mace around and into the side of her un-armored skull. 

The daemon then started toeing a hardly conscious Arya towards the pit, which would leave her secured on a spike. Gendry rushed forward and tackled horned beast, the things head bashing into the bottom rungs of a bone cage. The old man inside the cage, who was naked but for his under garments came and pulled the leather helm from the beasts head and pushed in his eyes with his thumbs. 

The Daedra gargled a roar and blindly landed his mace into Gendry’s side. Gendry hardly felt it.

Gendry proceeded to bash in his face with his war hammer. 

The Daedra rolled them over and Elbowed Gendry’s inner elbow on his Hammer hand. The Hammer was dropped and the maces shaft came towards Gendry’s throat. He pushed all his strength against the blue Deadroth whose sweat and blood was dripping into Gendry’s eyes.

Gendry’s strength started to overpower that of his opponent, until the creature bashed it’s head against his own. It’s horns pierced the bronze of his helmet which took most of the blow, but the horns still bashed open the skin of his his forehead open in two places. He cried out and his hands gave way.

The mace began to choke him, and Gendry’s strength left with his breath.

“I DON’T NEED SIGHT TO KILL YOU MORTAL!” The Daedra cried “I CAN SMELL THE FILTH ON YOU!”

As Gendry struggled he caught sight of Arya creeping up behind the Deadra.

“AND YOUR BITCH!” it growled before turning to hit Arya again letting Gendry catch his breath.

His blow never met her however, probably due to the loss of his sight, and the girl sliced his throat. Some of the blood spattered on her, Gendry could see through his blurred vision, but most of it poured onto him when the creature fell forward, dead.

The old man grabbed his hand and squeezed “You’re alright there Bull Boy?” he asked. 

Gendry looked up, and recognized the man from the city guard. When he was a child he had run him off from throwing rocks at priests of Akatosh and Count Goldwine. He never took him to the dungeon, just ran him off. He should have, a little bastard boy could get himself a whipping or worse for throwing rocks at Holy men and High borns. He had, but never from this man.

“Have you even got a thimble ‘tween your ears boy?” he would say “Quit with all that nonsense! If you knew what was good for you you’d stop this nonsense.”

“You hear me? You alright?” he repeated.

“Yes sir,” he coughed to the man through his crushed throat.

“Your friend there doesn't look so well as you my boy.”

Gendry turned to see Arya on bended knee holding her head before slipping to the floor.

“Take the key off the demon’s belt,” the old man commanded as Gendry crawled over to the girl and pulled her into his arms. 

“Take the girl across the bridge outside that door, to the chamber of dark salvation on the other side. Throw her into the blood fountain, it’s her only chance to survive.”

Gendry looked back to him “I don’t understand-”

“Just do it! Do as I say there’s no time!”

Gendry set Arya down and pulled the black ornate key from the Deadra’s body and moved to find the lock on the bone cage.”

“No you fool!” shouted the man “That unlocks the citadel at the top of the next tower. Get in there, and remove the sigil stone from the fury spike. That is how you close the Oblivion gate.”

“Close shut the jaws of Oblivion,” Arya said in her stupor.

“Well how do I get you out??”

“YOU CAN’T! You haven’t got time! Take the girl to the blood well boy.”

Gendry shook his head “No, I’m not leaving you behind.”

“You will do as I say Soldier! If you've got a thimble tween your ears you will do as I say and save us all!”

Gendry said nothing else. He scooped up Arya and left out the door as the old man told him. 

The bridge was narrow, high, and had no railing but instead was lined with spikes. It’s width was not so much as four planks of wood. Arya was gone to him now, eye’s shut, unstirring and growing cold in his arms.

He could not help but notice, bleeding and shivering on a narrow bridge in hell, how strange she was. Quick and magic, mysterious and delicate; at least seemingly so. The girl could hold her own there was no doubt, but she was the smallest Nord he’d ever seen and she could die all the same.

Gendry rushed across the narrow bridge, careful but quick.

He pushed the door aside with his shoulder and found the great blood well waiting inside. Three tiers high spilling and spurting red, with a large pool at the bottom. He rushed across the way and held onto his half dead companion tightly before dropping her inside. 

***

Arya’s eyes sprang open, but all she could see was red. Her head ached and the side of it stung. Her whole body suddenly contorted in pain that shot through her like lightning. She screamed and inhaled warm blood, she coughed and swallowed and a soft sort of anger overcame her. She was strong.

Arya lifted herself up from the fountain and opened her eyes. She found Gendry sitting there with his forehead bashed open, a shocked expression that turned to relief “You’re alive.”

It seemed he couldn't, or didn't think to resist the urge to take her face in her hand.

“Was I almost not?” Arya asked, her top half growing cold in the open air, the rest of her warm in the blood.

“Yeah,” he said “Yeah I thought you were gone.”

She rose to a standing position, and Gendry rose and made way as she stepped out, blood pooling at her feet. 

She reached for her short sword but it was gone, along with Gran Gill’s staff. She must have lost them when she fell. 

“I feel different,” she commented pulling a few blood soaked braids behind her ear. She felt shocked, and the quiet rage was still with her.

“Better?” he inquired.

She nodded, she did feel better, but there was something other than herself inside of her, something that wasn't there before she awoke in the fountain of blood. A quiet rage, hardly present but still inside of her stirring. 

With it was an urge, the urge that had always been there. Get this boy to Weynon Priory, shut the jaws of Oblivion.  
“Let’s get going.”

They made their way up the tower and finally to a locked door.

“This must be the Citadel...we have to take the sigil stone out of a...fury spike and then this will all be over. Are you ready?”

Arya nodded “Ready. Are you? This passage won’t be clear like the other ones, the guards never got this far. If there are more deadra in there can you handle yourself?”

“I’m more worried about you.”

“Same, but we have to give it a go...don’t die in there please. I HAVE to get you to the priory.”

“As mi’lady commands.” he japed.

She smiled “Onwards.”


	4. Hollow Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Gendry move on to the citadel to find the sigil stone and close the Oblivion gate.

Sansa kneeled on the cold stone ground, picking the lock of the bards college. King Olaf’s effigy still smoldered and smoked slightly in the moonlight, but Sansa was enveloped in darkness. The door clicked, and came open in front of her. She grabbed up her bags and rushed in.

The last Princess and The Bard were gone long before they were missed.

“I have a secret,” Sansa had whispered on the inside of the girls ear “I don’t trust anyone with it. All I trust is you and me...Arya’s escape plan was never to head to Whiterun OR solitude. They are looking for her in all the wrong places. She always told me she’d go south to throw them off, hide away in a trading cart, then jump off into the river when she was in the empire and let it take her all the way too Leyawiin.”

Ledili whispered back “But the Boltons are Imperial loyalists now, the count would just send her back to the dreadfort. Even if she came home the Empire might make her. Arya’s probably heading for Stormcloak territory. Maybe down in the Rift.”

“She’s going south either way, I know it.Stay in Riften's, join up with the thieves guild. Maybe not even stop, get a ride with some new recruits down to Bravil and cross over into Morrowind. But she’s not coming west and she isn’t joining the rebels.”

“Why not join up with the Stormcloaks?”

“She didn’t want to fight the Empire...she just wanted to be far away...Didn’t even want to come home, not as long as this war goes on.”  
“...Why do you want to find her then? She’s not coming home.”

“Because my place is with you and my sister. She needs me, and I need her.”

***  


In the citadel hall, where the walls and floor were red and fleshy, Gendry and Arya were hearing thunder clap and the noise of a large group of deadra in the chamber ahead.

“Okay,” Arya said still soaked through with blood “You stay here and guard my back, I’ll go and fetch the Sigil stone.”

‘She may have hit her head harder than I thought’ “You aren’t even armed...I’ll go get it, you back me up with the magic stuff.”

He started off warhammer at the read, but her hands pulled him back “Wait! We don’t need weapons for this, I was born under the shadow.”  
He turned to her “You sure you weren’t born under the LADY.”

She rolled her eyes at him “Count to Sixty, if I’m not back by then, run in and make some noise.”

Arya disappeared in front of his eyes, and then her fingers from around his arms. He stopped and looked about confused, but counted as she told him too.”

“One Mehrunes Dagon, Two Mehrunes Dagon, Three Mehrunes Dagon-”

***  
Arya moved silently past the Deadra with their heavy swords and battle axes. Some wore no plate and only light robes like the cultists had worn. Demon magic users she had to assume.

She moved up the fleshy rise, which wrapped it’s way around the fury spike, trying not to make it move. Coming from the flesh ramp and onto the bone spiked stairs, a rather large Deadra seemed to hear her or catch her scent. 

She moved up the long horns of bone in the wall with quick and quiet feet. Although, perhaps too quick as she slipped and hit the bone half way up, hard. Her arm being slashed open on one of the spikes. She couldn't see how serious it was, because she was still invisible. that made no difference to the daedra, he heard her. He smelled her and followed up the steps reaching after her blindly. 

Some of the other Deadra begans to stir. 

“KINSMAN,” one growled “WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU GRABBING AT THE SHADOWS?”

“BECAUSE THERE IS AN INTRUDER UNDERNEATH THEM!”  
***  
Gendry was only on his 43rd second when he heard what was going on in the chamber and rushed forward into the heart of the citadel, where the fury spike burned.

“Hey!” he shouted. Every last Deadra, which must have been twenty in total, turned to him and for a moment did not respond to the unexpected human in the mismatched, blood spattered armor.

He froze a moment, as a mace wielding demon charged toward him. He raised his arm to block the beasts main hand and swung his hammer so hard the Deadra’s head almost came clean off.

“FOR KVATCH!”  
***  
Arya scurried up the rest of the steps as her Deadric stalker was now occupied in joining the fight down stairs. 

She wasn’t quite out of the woods, as at the top, gaurding the sigil stone was a great horned Ogre with long sharp teeth and a massive club, and her minute of invisibility ran out in front of her eyes.

“We’re done for,” she said aloud as the beast advanced. She faked to the left before running right around the monster, but it swung around with his club knocking her into the air.

In mid air, pain coursing through her body Arya reached out to the glowing black stone inside of the fury spike...and held it in her fist. 

As soon as she began to fall the chamber began to crumble and the deadra began to scramble. The room was filled with light. She felt someone catch her and fall with her in their arms to the ground, presumably Gendry because everyone else in the room would have rather caught her on a sword or a spear.

***

The air around them began to cool, and the light flashed so bright that he coulden’t keep his eyes open. There was a last clash of thunder before rain was falling down upon them, and the two of them lay in the rubble of the gate outside Kvatch. 

The blood on Arya’s face and clothes and in her hair began to soften and run in the water, but it was too hardened to clear completely away without a scrub and the white imprint his hand had made in the fresh blood remained. 

The guards rushed over cheering, and her eyes fluttered open before she thrust the glowing sigil stone into the air for all to see. 

Gendry laughed as they were lifted up onto hands and shoulders, to the chant of “Bull! Bull! Bull!” and the bickering over what to call the blood covered girl. As they began to ask her name she fell lax in their arms and the celebration came to a halt. 

“Get her to the Dark Elf healer in the encampment, you do it,” he pointed to a guard. Gendry began to follow but a guard caught his shoulder “Are you hurt too my boy?”

“No not as badly.”

“Then come with us! Let’s clear out the rest of those monsters and take our city back!”

He hesitated and fell under both the pressure of the city guard, and his own rage. He went with them back into the city.

***

Arya awoke in a warm metal wash tub, meant for clothes rather than people, with other girls scrubbing blood off of her arms and back while a Dark elf was healing her wounds. 

Her whole body ached so much she hardly cared that she was naked. 

“I saw you,” Arya said to the dark elf woman “You were healing an Argonian man in the encampment.”

The woman nodded solemnly “Yes my husband.”

“-Everyone's arguing over what to call you,” interupted one girl with ginger hair who couldn't seem to contain herself “The scarlet Maiden, Daughter of Talos, Bull Heart is a popular one. The Bull and his Heart their saying, I like that one.”

Arya’s brow furrowed slightly in indignation before she realized more importantly, that the last Septim wasn’t in her sight “Where is the bull? He lives?”

“Yeah,” said the ginger headed girl before continueing dramatically, as if she were living in the songs “He’s helping clearing out the rest of the city, killing more daedra with the guard, trying to find Count-”

Arya attempted to sit up out of the wash tub, then fell back in pain, splashing all the women with cold bloody water. The young girls gasped and shrieked. 

“That’s enough now.” said the elf woman before catching Arya around the shoulders with her strong arms “Go and help with her armor.”

The woman helped her out of the tub and onto a chair, throwing a warm blanket around her shoulders.

“My heart breaks for you girl. What do you know of blood magic?” the woman asked placing a bowl of squirrel and wild onions before her.

Arya didn't understand how this was relevant “A little…”

“One must use the sacrifice of their own blood, in order to control another. This is wrong why is this wrong?”

“Because you can’t make people do what they don’t want.”

The woman shrugged “and why not? We swaddle babes to keep them from scratching themselves.”

“But that’s to protect them. They don’t know better.”

“And does a man know better?”

“Pfft, no!”

The woman smiled weakly “The man you saw me attempting to heal before, my man. He did not make it to see the gate closed.”

Arya didn’t speak, her mouth hung open stupidly for a moment searching for an apology but none came. 

“I told him not to venture out, to wait with me and the others. I could have made him stay. I could have cut my thumb open and bound him to the floor but I did not, and I would not...you can not control your bull my girl. He will do as every one of us does, as he will.”

***

Gendry stood shouldered with captain Madius, rain pouring from above, water filling his boots as the portcullis opened and then they rushed in, a dilapidated city guard, a band of Imperial legionnaires who saw the smoke from the road, and some pit dogs who’d been barricaded in the bloodworks of the arena. 

He shivered, horrified at the sight of a great green spider with an ass the size of a wine cask. He smashed into it with his hammer. As the spider turned round the hammer came away from his hands and the front of the spider, which was the body of woman, glared at him indignant. 

“Erm,” he said still looking into her white angry eyes “Pardon miss.”

She hissed and sent him spinning away with a flick of one of her eight willowy legs. 

He landed across the body of a blue giant, who had wielded a two handed sword in one fist.

An arrow came through the front of the beasts chest in the middle of the frey, and it fell to the ground, it’s heart burst open. 

Gendry knelt down and pried the great sword from it’s hands, re-arming himself before rushing after the captain into the great hall. It was dark but for the light of flame atornachs and broken beams. More men followed after, and more men fell. Gendry stayed close.

While the captain was engaged with a frost giant, he instructed Gendry to go forward and find Goldwine’s chambers to see what forces had fallen back there. 

Afterword Gendry didn’t know why he expected any force to really be left, or for the Count to be alive but he had. When he saw count Goldwine, lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood he was at a loss. 

Gendry knelt down, and pulled the count’s sigil off his stubborn cold finger. In this Oblivion crisis it seemed, Kvatch had achieved equality between the commoner and the noble. Dagon’s wrath was indiscriminate, come to swallow them all.


	5. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Gendry head back to the priory.

Arya slept in a cot on the floor wrapped in furs. By the time dawn came she was good as new, thanks to her healer friend Bella. Her things packed away, and dressed in lighter traveling gear she went and met Gendry at the top of the hill.

“Is that Kvatch guardsman armor you’ve got on now?” she asked. It was something like a big target on his chest she thought. If anyone saw the young man, they’d know where he had come from.

He nodded “Captain said he wouldn't be needing it anymore. He’s giving it up...he gave me something for you though too. It was something left in the armory.”

He handed Arya a wooden kite shield, painted all white with a black wolf’s head.

Arya leaned her head to the side in vague recognition. Wolves, something was important about wolves…

“It’s wonderful...that’s a fine shield.”

“Fine for hanging up on a wall maybe. Couldn't take much of a fight if it came down to it.”

She shrugged “That’s all I’d use it for anyhow. I like to keep my spell hand free.” Arya smelled the morning air, hearing the birds chirp and looking over to the ruin of a city. 

“Have you got yourself a horse?”

He shook his head “There isn’t a horse to be had. They all ran off or were slaughtered.”

Arya nodded “I guess we’ll just have to ride double then, I hate to do that to the horse…”

“He won’t mind, your tiny.”

“Will you stop saying I’m tiny, I’ve known much shorter people.”

He moved past her still talking “It’s not just that you’re short, you aren’t stocky all. You are the littlest nord I have ever met.”

“Would you just shut up about it? Are you ready to go?”

He began nodding before she even finished her last question.

She urged the traveling pony up the road, sitting uncomfortably forward and in uncomfortable proximity with the bull.

Gendry broke a long silence “You know I was hoping things would look better in the morning but they didn’t.” A strained hesitancy in his voice told her it was something he didn’t want to say out loud at all.

She shrugged “What? Did you think the city would have repaired itself?”

“No actually,” he said indignant “I didn’t. I wasn’t really expecting to see more dead then I could count collected in the square laying down in rows. Maybe I should have been.”

“...Anyone you knew?”

“I didn’t stay to find out.”

After many hours it was well past sun down and Arya’s legs felt like they’d been beaten.

“We should set up camp somewhere,” Gendry said.

Arya shook her head “No, we should ride through the night. We have to keep moving.”

They climbed down and walked to keep themselves awake and eventually they came upon the hill which the priory was located, at which point Arya could hear the clashing of metal.

“What’s going on?” Gendry said quickening his pace. 

“No Gendry be careful, don’t-” Prior Maborel came into view, clashing swords a red cloaked mythic dawn agent.

She quickly unsheathed her short sword, but before she came near enough it was too late and the old man was run through.

“You son of a bitch!” she cried before she was in striking distance of the cultist. She rose her spell hand and knocked him on his back with a bolt of fire, before coming forward jamming her blade through his ribs. 

She whipped round to check on Gendry, only too see him chasing another cultist into the chapel with his stupid hammer. She ran after him thoughtlessly, but before her eyes adjusted to the brightness she was struck with something from behind.

***  
Ledili took a dagger to Sansa’s long red hair and threw chunks of it into a bag.

“Why not into the river?” Sansa asked, her own feet hanging off of the ship taking them south. 

“If it washes up on shore I don’t want anyone behind us having a clue, especially not the Boltons. They’ll be looking Arya in the Rift and then the Empire soon, once they realize she’s not heading for Solitude. Besides, we can sell it in the city for some extra coin. Ginger hair will fetch a good price.”

“They could even be with us on this ship,” Sansa observed in a hushed tone “Who’s to say they aren’t looking south already?”

“Well if they are,” Ledili said removing a jar of charcoal and honey hash oil from her bag and smearing some on her fingers before wiping it over Sansa’s closed eyes “no one will recognize you.”

Ledili offered the reflective blade of her dagger and Sansa admired her reflection in the moonlight. She touched her face, almost unable to recognize even herself. Almost all her hair gone, her eyes made dark. This was something Arya might do, she thought. That is to say, something she might even do when she had a choice. Something to make her look fierce and frightening. Sansa did not like it. She didn’t like losing her her pretty hair, she didn’t like smearing foul smelling black around her eyes. 

“Is their enough to run through my hair?” Sansa asked.

“Yeah. I can always get more when we reach the city, then we can get something more permanent.”

They moved the black gunk all through Sansa’s hair making it dark and greasy. She immediately wanted to wash it out, it felt and smelled unpleasant.

“I look properly Ugly,” Sansa said looking at her reflection, not looking at all the princess she had been.

“You look just as beautiful as you ever were,” Ledili said and kissed her on the cheek as she sat down beside her.

“It’s strange. Now that it’s gone I feel like my beauty is all I’m worth.”

Ledili took that in silence. She wasn't the type to tell you how you should or shouldn't feel. 

***

Gendry awoke with his hands and feet were bound behind his back and his head throbbing. His mouth hurt terribly, and when he tried to open his mouth their can a great pain like her was being stabbed with a hundred needles. He groaned what would have been a scream could he have opened his mouth. 

He was in some sort of hooded carriage. They bumped along a road that wasn’t at all even. 

They came to a stop some time later, and a cultist in a red hood came into the back of the carriage with a jagged dagger.

Gendry’s breath came in great huffs as he was sure the man had come to slit his throat. However he cut the bindings which held his legs behind him, and then cut his feet apart. His hands however, were still bound. 

He was lifted to his feet gruffly and shoved out of the back of the hooded carriage. He landed on his chest and the wind was knocked out of him.

They were on a stony riverside, and in the distance he could hear a waterfall. 

The cultist jerked him back to his feet and led him up over a hill and through water, then into a cavern. Others walked with him. Some dressed as cultists, others in plainer. Once they were inside the ones that were not in red were led away, and Gendry was shoved through lantern lit dirty hallways, and torch lined tunnels. 

In the great chamber that seemed to be their ultimate destination, there stood a great effigy depicting what Gendry knew to be the deadric prince Mehrunes Dagon. He sat in a stone chair, a hundred feet high with one knee pulled up and one foot on the ground. He had two sets of arms, all resting around him. One sat on the hilt of a great stone axe. Out of his head were four horns and two tusks that stuck out of his mouth like a boar's. 

Down below the statue was a man with thinning hair and olive skin preaching to a crowd even lower in the great underground chamber still. 

“Praise be!” 

The crowd of cultists repeated this “Praise be!”

“Praise be to our brothers and sisters! Great shall their reward be in paradise.”

“Praise be!”

Gendry was dragged forward to his terror, onto the platform in front of the man who was preaching, at this distance he could see was the man was an elf. 

The man took hold of his arm and Gendry jerked away, defiant. The two cultists who had led him forward shoved him now to the ground harshly. 

He landed, squarely in front of Arya’s face. She was in the front of the crowd dressed as one of them. What was this?

“The Dragon throne is empty!” Said the preacher “And we have the amulet of kings!”

Arya’s eyes grew wide at this and Gendry lifted his head to see the man presenting a ruby trinket to the crowd. He believed it was the amulet of a king, Gendry had never seen a Ruby so large.

“We have the last of the dragon born! Praise be!”

“Praise be!”

The cultists lifted him up and presented him to the crowd. ‘I’m not the dragon born,’ Gendry would have shouted if he could have opened his mouth. Instead he shook his head frantically, he had nothing to do with the royal family. He was no one. 

The man locked a hand around gendry’s jaw and held his face close to his, and Gendry could smell his stinking breath.

“Yes...yes he has the eyes,” said the man said not to the crowd but to himself thoughtfully, and any look of doubt that had been in his face melted into satisfaction. The mans voice was old and intelligent. Gendry’s own doubt in it’s abundance left him in the same instance. His father was as likely to be Uriel Septim as any man, and this man, this powerful knowing man knew exactly what he had found. 

He had found the last of the dragon born. Gendry was the last, the dragon's bastard.

“Hear now!” The man said returning to his preaching as gendry was brought to a stone table “The words of lord dagon!”

Next to him on the table was a sleeping man, naked but for his small clothes.

“When I walk the earth again,” the preacher said “the faithful among you shall receive your reward: to be set above all other mortals forever. As for the rest, the weak shall be winnowed: the timid shall be cast down: the mighty shall tremble at my feet and beg for pardon.”

He looked to Arya, all around her chanted “So sayeth lord Dagon! Praise be!” Her own lips were silent, watching, waiting. 

“Your reward, brothers and sisters. The time of cleansing draws nigh. I go now to paradise.” the next part he said matter of factly “I shall return with lord dagon at the coming of the dawn.”

He held up the amulet and it glowed. From it came a portal that glowed with fire like the gates of Oblivion. He stepped into it and was gone. 

Another cultist, a dark elf woman spoke “We have new brothers and sisters who wish to bind themselves in service to lord dagon,” she rose her hand and pointed to Arya “You first. Come forward initiate.”

Arya climbed up onto the platform and the woman continued to speak “You have come to dedicate yourself to lord Dagon’s service. This pact must be sealed with red-drink. The blood of lord Dagon’s enemies.”

She gave Arya a dagger “You have the great luck of offering up the blood of the last dragon to lord dagon, his greatest enemy. Surely he will show you much favor at dawn.”

Arya came over and stood over him. Her face was shocked and grave. 

“I’m not sure how I’m going to get you out of this,” she whispered harshly “oh you are such a-”

“-Girl,” 

Gendry looked over to the sleeping man who was whispering, his eyes were still closed 

“Lovely girl.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think, if you can't here than message or shoot me an ask on tumblr. I'm BaratheonBabe there too. I'd like to know how to make this fic the best it can be.


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